When Riot is looking to balance Champions, should they make balance choices around Champions off roles.
If a champion is primarily played top but some people also play them in the jungle, should Riot make it so those people can still jungle? Or is the jungling ability of that champ just a nice perk that doesn't matter?
Is it Riot's job to allow this off roles to exist or are off roles just perks that should come and go?
Ben Sharpio1 votesPROBABLY not because you affect a smaller amount of people.
Looknook1 votesBut don't those people have a right to play the champion the way they wanna play it?
TheSnacken1 votesI guess it depends on what you're giving up. We can balance Ziggs for Bot and for Mid fairly easily, without trowing one out the window. But, say, Soraka being balanced for both Support (her primary role) and Jungle (a secondary role) is probably too tall of an order. Making her tough enough to survive the jungle clear would likely make her too strong in her Support station.
Even then, there are wild cases like Kennen who are never fully balanced for any one role. Kennen tends to pingpong between Top, Mid, and ADC depending on the season. He can perform any of those roles with moderate efficacy, and doesn't seem to need adjusted very often. Any time Kennen starts to shift, the balance team has to decide if its Kennen being too strong or too weak, or if thiz just part of his natural cycle.
Ultimately, I don't think there's a clear answer for this, especially for Jungle specifically, which has even more broad balance challenges.